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Are you open to new experiences? Are you a risk taker? Do you like parties? 你乐于体验新鲜事物吗？你愿意冒险吗？你喜欢派对吗？ Odds are, questions like these were not part of your last doctor’s appointment. But one day they might be — a growing body of research suggests that your personality can influence your health. And some experts think changing people’s personal traits might one day help treat diseases — or keep people from getting them in the first place. 这类问题不大可能出自你刚看过的医生之口。但有朝一日医生也许真会这么问——越来越多的研究表明，你的个性会影响你的健康。一些专家认为，在未来的某一天，改变人的性格特征或许会有助于治疗疾病——或者把病痛扼杀在摇篮之中。 The research also comes at a time when many are calling for a more individualized approach to medicine. Some day, researchers hope, personality testing could be used to help your doctor design treatment specifically to you. 相关研究工作取得进展之际，许多人正在呼吁医生以更有针对性的方法来给病人开药。研究者们希望，个性测试有一天可以成为你的医生为你专门设计治疗方案的辅助手段。 For a study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, Kavita Vedhara and her co-authors gave personality tests to 121 people, and tested their blood to analyze the expression of genes related to inflammation. They found that the personality trait of extroversion was associated with increased expression of genes promoting inflammation. Meanwhile, conscientiousness, which the authors define as a trait “reflecting planfulness, caution, and harm avoidance,” was associated with decreased expression of pro-inflammatory genes. Since inflammation can be part of the body’s response to infection, higher expression of pro-inflammatory genes can mean a more active immune system; lower expression can mean a relatively less active one. | 
